Scripture: Matthew 1:23
“They will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’).”
When Tom travels, the house… shifts.
I wouldn’t call it a disaster zone.
It’s more of a “light frat house situation.”
Nothing dangerous.
Nothing truly gross.
Just… a loosening of standards.
I stay up later than normal.
I leave little piles everywhere — clothes I might wear again, mail I’ll “get to tomorrow,” random papers, etc. that mysteriously gather in one spot.
I don’t fully finish things.
I let small messes stay small messes because, honestly, who’s going to see them?
But then…
the day he’s coming home?
Oh, it’s a full-on cleanup mission.
Suddenly, I’m wiping down surfaces, organizing spaces I’ve ignored for weeks, restoring order like I’m auditioning for an HGTV reveal moment.
I want the house to say,
“Look! Everything’s perfect! Nothing to see here! Chaos? What chaos? Everything is nice, neat, and completely in order.
Know what? Sometimes, if we are honest,
we do the same thing with God.
We try to clean up the emotional piles.
Straighten the places inside us that feel chaotic.
Put on the “we’re totally fine” version of ourselves before opening the door.
But then we look at the Christmas story…
and we remember that Immanuel — God with us — doesn’t wait for things to look presentable.
God doesn’t enter only when everything is tidy.
God steps into the unfiltered places first.
Sit with that a minute –
God steps into the UNFILTERED places first! Not the perfect FB or Insta pic.
The realness. The rawness. The beauty AND the hurt and pain.
Think about how God actually showed up:
A scandalous pregnancy.
A confused carpenter.
A birth in a barn.
A baby placed in a feeding trough.
The first Christmas was not pretty, polished, or pulled together.
There was no time to clean up before God arrived.
God arrived in the mess.
Which means something stunning and comforting:
Immanuel comes into the real rooms of our lives —
not the curated ones we try to show off.
Immanuel sits with us in:
the unfinished emotional work
the piles we keep promising to deal with
the habits we can’t shake
the grief we avoid naming
the exhaustion we hide under “I’m just busy”
the parts of ourselves we’d rather no one see
And maybe the invitation of Advent is this:
What if we stop rushing to clean up our lives before we let God in?
What if the things we try to hide — the half-finished, the unorganized, the un-presentable — are the exact spaces where God is already waiting?
Not after we fix it.
Not after we understand it.
Not after we pull it together.
Right now.
Right here.
In the unedited rooms of our real lives.
Reflection
Where is the “frat house room” in your inner world right now?
The place that feels messy, unfinished, or unmanageable?
What happens when you imagine God sitting in that exact space with you?
Practice
Find a quiet moment today.
Picture the messy room — literal or emotional.
Then pray:
“Immanuel, be with us here.
Not in the perfected version of our lives,
but in the real, unfiltered story we’re living today.”
Advent doesn’t ask for perfection.
It invites presence —
ours and God’s, together, in the mess.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea